China Goes Tit for Tat Over U.S. Chip Bans
On Tuesday, China banned the export of gallium, germanium, antimony, and industrial diamonds to the U.S., in response to U.S. trade and investment restrictions on Chinese technology companies. Though tit-for-tat tariffs occasionally lead to bilateral trade agreements, protectionism is more frequently a response in kind. China’s rare materials ban is the latest such response in the ongoing U.S.–China semiconductor trade war.
China’s ban was a direct response to the Bureau of Industry and Security’s (BIS) interim final rule, also filed Tuesday, which updated export controls on advanced semiconductors and the machinery used to make them. BIS’s rule aims to hinder China’s capacity to produce advanced-node integrated circuits by restricting “the export of 24 types of chipmaking tools that were not previously targeted,” according to The Financial Times.
Advanced-node ICs are semiconductors featuring high transistor density, processing speed, and artificial intelligence capability, which the bureau warns is crucial to China’s “military modernization and weapons of mass destruction [WMD] programs.” Claims of WMD programs are frightening, but circumspection is warranted: Advanced-node ICs are also used in a wide variety of consumer products. Examples include Apple’s A17 bionic chip, used in the iPhone 15 Pro; Apple’s M3 chip, used in modern MacBooks; and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which drives the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra.
Nonetheless, BIS bills its export controls as allaying the national security concerns posed by the 140 companies added to the Entity List on Tuesday. The BIS says all 140 entities are guilty of at least one of the following: developing and producing advanced-node integrated circuits, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, or supporting
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